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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25232431">"I've Never Been To Legoland, I Just Wanted You Guys To Think I Was Cool"</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheesestick/pseuds/cheesestick'>cheesestick</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Community (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Angst in the first chapter but then we get into good 'ol wacky hijinks, Character analysis in the form of self-reflection, Emotions, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, If I can make Troy angsty I can make anyone angsty, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Episode: s06e13 Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television, and a movie, no beta readers we die like men, overuse of compound sentences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 03:02:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,452</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25232431</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheesestick/pseuds/cheesestick</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Troy's voyage has finally ended, and it sparks a change in the group. They reunite for a vacation to Legoland California together for another adventure, for old times' sake. Things that were never addressed in the group come to the surface, and major changes occur. How will their trip to San Diego affect Greendale's finest?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Annie Edison/Jeff Winger, Frankie Dart/Britta Perry, Trobed if you squint but honestly platonic soulmates need representation so if you dont its fine, Troy Barnes &amp; Abed Nadir</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>"I've Never Been To Legoland, I Just Wanted You Guys To Think I Was Cool"</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is basically just a self-indulgent Trobed reunion and the group getting together after some time apart because when I rewatched Community for the first time since I was in middle school I realized how much I missed them :( This chapter hurts but don't worry things will get better I promise</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>  The most important thing Troy Barnes had learned from sailing around the world was that as fantastic an actor LeVar Burton was on screen, in real life he was incredibly transparent. Maybe it was the fact that if you spend a little over two years in a confined space with a person, even your celebrity idol that you had previously made a fool of yourself in front of, you’ll become very aware of their mannerisms. So when LeVar asked him how he had grown from the trip, the face Troy received after giving a bullshit answer about being independent and his own man was one of unadulterated skepticism. Okay, maybe the knowing someone you’re confined with went both ways. The actor schooled his features and gave some lame excuse about prepping the boat, leaving Troy alone below decks with his thoughts.</p><p>  Troy sat in the cabin of the Childish Tycoon with nothing but his idol’s disappointment and the promise of fourteen point three million dollars hanging over his head. All the travel-themed coming of age movies he had watched with Abed to prepare were a lie. Journeys didn’t truly change you. They just made you miss what you had while surrounded by beautiful places. He had spent the majority of his voyage thinking and overthinking about the study group. Not one of them had come back to Greendale happy, which made the distance even more painful. In all his travels, he had written letters to them. Every member of the study group had at least a novel’s worth of stories about his adventures across the world. Even during the unfortunate incident with those pirates, he had managed to get his hands on a pen and paper to tell Abed, knowing how excited his best friend would be to have a valid real-world example of what pirates are like, which would give him more material to overanalyze Pirates of the Caribbean.</p><p>  The issue was, all of the letters he had written to the people he held dear were sitting in a rather tacky nautical style chest of Pierce’s in his bunk. Other than the occasional call to his mom to assure her he was alive, Troy hadn’t reached out to anyone for the past two years. As with most isolated trips, the need to speak to people fizzled out in him around the millionth check for any signal on his phone.</p><p>  Besides, the dreariness of the study group made him scared that any reminders of him successfully getting out of Greendale would only hurt them. They had all sullenly returned, disillusioned with how their lives had turned out after they left the black-mold covered walls of the only true home they had ever known. But just as they began to grow back together, Pierce, in a very on-brand move, upended the group and pulled them back apart by dying and staging an elaborate actual bequeathal. Troy had had to leave his friends at quite possibly the worst time when every one of them had faced the world outside Greendale and lost everything they had worked for there.</p><p>  Perhaps the fact that the people he cared about most were struggling was what had prevented Troy from changing too much. Worry about his Greendale family certainly had not made him more independent, and while his time at sea had made him a bit more knowledgeable about other cultures, it had done little more than fill up his phone’s storage with photos from tourist sites all over the world. Looking through those photos, the wistfulness that hit him led to something like an epiphany, yet he had known it all along deep down. With that, he exited the photo app and began to draft a text.</p><p>  Compared to all the other ports he had seen, the port of Los Angeles wasn’t too impressive. It was mostly industrial and very polluted, but it was close to LAX and the quickest way back to his friends. He checked his phone. Four bars. With a deep breath, he pressed the little arrow. Then, re-reading the message, he typed something else out. All he had to do was wait for a response and hope to god his friends were okay and didn’t hate him for leaving them.</p><p><strong>Troy Barnes</strong>: Hey man I just wanted to let you know i’ve reached LA :D I know i haven’t been a great friend for the past few years so it’s completely ok to blow me off but I wanted to know if you could do me a favor<br/>
<strong>Troy Barnes</strong>: Also, can you not tell any1 i texted u? I trust u the most not to tell the group about it i wanna surprise them lol</p><p>  Jeff was in his office nursing two fingers of scotch and waiting for exactly no one to show up to office hours when his phone dinged. Jeff ignored it in favor of staring at the liquid in his glass. It dinged again. Giving in to the device, he turned it on and checked it. He promptly choked on his drink.</p><p><strong>Jeff Winger:</strong> Troy holy shit it’s been a while how was it?<br/>
<strong>Jeff Winger:</strong> I’d be happy to do whatever you need but Abed, Annie, and Shirley arent in Colorado anymore. Last I heard from Abed he was working in LA though so you may be able to see him.</p><p>  Of course they weren’t. Troy had been gone for two years, and even though he had matured a lot on the Tycoon, he was still somehow naive enough to think that his friends hadn’t moved on. It was a bittersweet feeling, knowing that his friends were able to grow without him there. He was happy that they were doing well, but the knowledge that they didn’t need him lurked in the back of his mind. The thing was, the lesson he had truly learned on his trip was that he did need his friends. He had seen all seven wonders of the world, met people from all over, and was fluent enough to get by in eight languages. But somehow the thing he had yearned for the most on his journey was the end. Aboard the Tycoon, he was haunted by his former study group, hearing Britta’s lectures on the state of the country he was in, thinking sarcastically in Jeff’s voice, imagining Shirley and Annie’s ‘awww’s whenever he saw wildlife. The notable absence was Abed. His best friend’s voice didn’t follow him as the others’ did. His brain wasn’t kind enough to him to allow fond memories that could be reminisced upon nostalgically. Abed’s absence was a pain he carried with him at all times.</p><p>  But if Abed was in LA, maybe he could reunite with his best friend. Maybe the Abed-shaped hole in his heart could begin to heal. He continued to text with Jeff for a while, getting the necessary information about Abed and catching up on what had happened in his absence. As the conversation began to dwindle, His boat pulled into port.</p><p>  As Troy and LeVar Burton tied the boat up on the dock of Pierce’s vacant waterfront estate, an awkward silence fell over the two. Troy felt he owed it to LeVar to properly explain how he felt about his journey. The man had dedicated two years of his life following a whim of Pierce’s and was a saint for doing so. In all their adventures, Troy had become close with the actor, who evolved from an untouchable celebrity he idolized into someone more akin to a father figure. So while the two prepared the boat to be left as Troy reunited with his friends, he spoke.</p><p>“LeVar? Listen, man, I can’t say I was completely honest with you earlier. I think that becoming my own man was what Pierce wanted for me, but I just miss Abed.” He paused to think, “Traveling the world with you has been awesome, and I really liked our adventures, but what I really learned is that some adventures just aren’t worth it without your best friend.”</p><p>LeVar stood, finished with the knot he had just tied. “Troy, thank you for your honesty, both with me and yourself. I can tell you that even though you haven’t grown in the way Mr. Hawthorne wanted you to, you have grown. This trip has made you more selfless and caring, and you seem wiser. I would recommend you let your friends know how much they mean to you, starting with Abed”</p><p>  By the time LeVar had finished, the rideshare Troy had ordered for him to go to the airport had arrived, and the pair had finished securing the Childish Tycoon. With a firm handshake that became a hug, Troy’s childhood idol left him. Troy’s journey to find himself both ended and began with the conclusion of his trip. He had changed, but finding his true self meant finding his best friend.</p>
<hr/><p><strong>Jeff Winger:</strong> Hey man I got mistaken for that guy from Inspector Spacetime again and the fan I was talking to asked me why I wasn’t at the cast pop-up in LA. She told me it’s on Hollywood Blvd, thought you’d be interested.<br/>
<strong>Abed Nadir:</strong> Cool. Cool cool cool.</p><p>  Abed knew something was up. Thoraxis hadn’t been a recurring character in Inspector Spacetime for the past 3 seasons, and if there was a meet and greet he would have known about it. But Jeff was his friend, and more importantly, the leading man from his time at Greendale. Knowing that the pop up was a lie, yet following Jeff’s instructions, he arrived on Hollywood Boulevard, taking in the familiar sight of tourists meandering the city, keeping his eye out for anything out of the ordinary. His roving eyes met a familiar face and suddenly everything else melted away. As he drank in the sight of the man that had taken his heart around the world exactly eight hundred and thirty-three days ago time seemed to stop.</p><p>  Troy looked familiar but different. His tan tank top emblazoned with a stereotypical skyline from somewhere he had visited seemed to reflect the change in him. It showed off a new kind of confidence in not caring and flaunted how much tanner and more muscular he was from his time at sea. His face erupted into that perfect smile Abed had missed so much, now surrounded by a short scruffy beard, and his hair had gotten longer. Troy’s face was weathered and sunburnt, but joyful as ever.</p><p>  Troy had never been a romantic interest to him, but he felt the man was his soulmate. Their friendship had fulfilled his life in a way he never knew he needed but had ached for whenever they were apart. As Abed stood there frozen in place, he tried to understand how this turn of events was possible. He’d been hoping for a plot twist in his life, but Troy’s return was a storyline he had kept locked away ever since he had left, knowing that he would get lost in the memories of his friend. Troy began walking towards him. Abed’s limbs took control as his brain struggled to process what was happening. Almost magnetically, the pair moved toward each other. The pair pulled each other into a hug that seemed to communicate everything unsaid over the past two years and stayed that way until the weight of the confused stares of the tourists became heavy enough to pry them apart.</p><p>“Please tell me I’m not dreaming”</p><p>“If you were dreaming, we’d be riding Godzilla into battle against a horde of zombies right now.” Troy bumped Abed’s shoulder affectionately, “Not that I’d be opposed to that.”</p><p>“My apartment here has a Dreamatorium that could use some tune-ups. Want to configure the places you’ve visited into it as future settings?”</p><p>“I can't think of anything else I’d rather do.”</p><p>  The pair walked away from the shitty tourist trap that was Hollywood Boulevard, reunited again, and happy to mindlessly chatter about the show Abed was working on and upcoming movies and the things Troy had seen around the world like nothing had changed.</p>
<hr/><p>  Troy and Abed’s new home was quintessential LA. It was sleek and minimalistic, but close enough to the beach to be grounded in reality. A small portion of Troy’s fortune had gone to buying and repurposing a small apartment building in Huntington Park, where they ran a homeless shelter and resource center for local at-risk youth. The pair were fantastic with kids, and Casa De Trobed’s movie nights were legendary.</p><p>  On one such movie night, Troy was snuggled up with Abed on their huge bean bag chair as volunteers and kids alike watched the giant projector as the team of superheroes broke apart and fought. Something about the split in the once-great team didn’t sit right with Troy, and his eyes inadvertently began to leak. Abed turned to him, presumably to make a comment about the camera angle or special effects, and realized what was going on. Abed grasped his friend’s hand and squeezed, knowing that the gesture brought Troy comfort when a movie made him emotional. Troy, however, continued to look at the screen and quietly cry in favor of squeezing back as usual so Abed knew something was wrong.</p><p>Abed whispered to the man next to him “F-I-N-E or F-Y-N-E?”</p><p>Troy looked at him, hot tears running down his face. “F-I-N-E.”</p><p>  Abed discreetly relocated his friend inside, where he slumped against the wall and slid down to the floor of the lobby. Abed joined him, sitting crosslegged and alertly watching Troy as he sat and cried. Abed had never been good with people expressing their emotions in ways such as crying, but with Troy, who did it often, he knew to get to the root of the problem.</p><p>“What’s wrong? I know that the fight they had at the airport was anticlimactic, but I’m sure a dreamatorium session will fix that.” Abed absentmindedly ran his thumb across Troy’s cheek, wiping away a tear.</p><p>Troy sniffled. “I miss the study group.” He stood up straighter and shook his head. “We haven’t all been together since I left. I know I sent them my letters and we skype with Annie all the time, but I haven’t seen everyone as a group since I left.”</p><p>Abed cocked his head and looked at Troy. “Remember the day of Pierce’s funeral? When we were doing the polygraph tests, you revealed you had never been to Legoland. It would be fitting that something from the day you chose to leave would be what brings us back together. It would be like a reunion episode.”</p><p>Troy’s tear-stained face broke out into a smile. “That would be perfect.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading!!! I'd really appreciate any kudos and comments you can spare :) Hopefully I'll post chapter 2 soon but honestly this took me like 3 weeks to write. I have the whole thing planned out though so I should be speedier</p></blockquote></div></div>
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